India's TikTok Ban

Overview

India's TikTok Ban refers to India's cybersecurity concerns over the Chinese-owned app TikTok during heightened border clashes between the two countries leading to the removal of 59 Chinese apps in late June 2020. The ban caused Redditors and other users online to post memes congratulating India due to the memetic general consensus on the platform Reddit good, TikTok bad.

Background

On June 29th, 2020, Asian News Internation posted to their Twitter^[1] account that "Government of India bans 59 mobile apps. Tik Tok, UC Browser and other Chinese apps included in the list" and added the list which received over 18,400 likes and 8,400 retweets in a day. According to The New York Times,^[2] "Analysts say up to a third of TikTok’s global users are based in India."

Developments

On June 29th, 2020, Redditor mattp_97 posted a Revenge of the Sith meme referring to the ban and the TikTok vs. YouTube Rating Drop to r/dankmemes^[3] (shown below, left). The post received over 65,700 points (94% upvoted) in a day. That same day, Redditor GetPeerPressured posted another meme in reaction to the news to r/memes^[4] and garnered over 50 points (88% upvoted) in a day (shown below, right).

On June 29th, TikTok India announced on Twitter^[5] that they will be meeting with concerned government officials to reply and prove they have adhered to proper privacy requirements (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 22,900 likes and 7,000 retweets in a few hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References